Christopher Hadley for The Road

Christopher Hadley is a journalist and author writing at the murky, wonderful intersection of history and folklore. His pieces have appeared in The Independent, The Guardian, The Times, London Review of Books, Esquire and his local parish magazine, among many other publications. His first book, Hollow Places, was published in 2019.

He joins us in the bookshop to deliver a talk in celebration of his new book, The Road which takes us on a lyrical journey into this past, retracing and searching for an elusive Roman road that sprang from one of the busiest road hubs in Roman Britain.

His passage is not always easy. Time and nature have erased many clues; bridges rotted and whole woods grew across the route. Carters found an easier ford downstream, and people broke up its milestones to mend new paths. Year after year the heavy clay swallowed whole lengths of it; the once mighty road became a bridleway, an overgrown hollow-way, a parched mark in the soil.

Hadley leads us on a hunt to discover, in Hilaire Belloc's phrase, 'all that has arisen along the way'. Gathering traces of archaeology, history and landscape from poems, church walls, hag stones and cropmarks, oxlips, killing places, hauntings and immortals, and things buried too deep for archaeology, The Road is a mesmerising journey into two thousand years of history only now giving up its secrets.

'This book deserves to be read at least twice' -The Times